Editorial: Regarding drug tests and the overly simple blame avoidance

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Much and more has been made this week about Gov. Tom Corbett’s grossly oversimplified remark that employers can’t fill jobs because jobless people can’t pass drug tests.

Here’s what he said: “There are many employers that say ... we are looking for people, but we can’t find anybody that, that has passed a drug test, a lot of them, and that’s a concern for me, because we’re having a serious problem with that.”

Corbett’s penchant for offensive, knee-jerk statements aside, one has to place things into context.

First and foremost, Corbett appears to be failing spectacularly at this point. His approval rating — at 26 percent of registered voters — is the lowest of his tenure. The latest Franklin & Marshall College Poll called it the lowest performance rating of any sitting governor in the poll’s history.

Meanwhile, a deep field of Democrats and Republicans have already lined up to oppose him, should he run for re-election.

The Democrats include state treasurer Rob McCord, U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz, and former U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, who lost a 2010 U.S. Senate race to Pat Toomey by 80,000 out of 4 million votes cast. All three would beat Corbett handily if the election was held now. The Republican field, led at this point by Montgomery County Commissioner Bruce Castor, is more obscure. But the fact that any Republicans are targeting their party leader this early in the race is unusual.

Meanwhile, despite ticking down slightly in the latest report, Pennsylvania continues to lag in the national unemployment rate, 7.9 to 7.6 percent, respectively. This despite years of booming industry driven by rampant natural gas fracking. But it’s also true that Pennsylvania generally avoided the worst of the Great Recession, and had less room for improvement than other states.

In fact, that’s the reason Corbett gave for another dismal statistic: Pennsylvania’s job growth rate fell to 47th in the nation in 2012. Last year the state generated 5,900 net new jobs for a growth rate of 0.11 percent, while the national rate approached 2 percent. Corbett says the state has added 110,000 new private sector jobs in his tenure, but he doesn’t talk much about the offsetting loss of public sector jobs driven by his trademark budgetary austerity.

In short, Corbett might be a little desperate to find any reason — other than his policies — for the state’s economic malaise.

Naturally, manufacturers that benefit from Corbett’s reluctance to tax them rushed to his aid this week, asserting that, yes indeed, they do have issues filling jobs owing to failed and avoided drug tests. But is it “a serious problem,” as Corbett claimed?

It seems not.Failed drug tests have always been a factor in employment rates. But economists say the problem has much more to do with a huge oversupply of labor driven by industries that have had years of recession to justify and master getting by with fewer personnel.

Adding to the problem are skills gaps driven by emerging industries and technologies, which the unemployed struggle to bridge for employers who can now afford to wait to fill spots with exactly whom they want.

So clearly, Pennsylvania’s economic issues are not simply a matter failed drug tests, or even a “serious problem.” We’re certain Corbett knows this.

Whether or not he’s able to do anything about the most significant issues plaguing Pennsylvania’s job market will be a matter for voters to judge, but in the meantime, he might want to avoid politically-driven simplifications that obscure them.